Exactly what happened !

delete5230

First,

World of Warcraft took the world by storm, it took the basic premises of earlier models and enhanced the experience 10x over.  Sure some fixated first generation players grumbled, but the masses loved it. 

Very powerful time for a popularity standpoint…..As time passed people wanted more of the same.  

 

Second,

Vanguard and Warhammer Online was in the making… People that loved World of Warcraft were expecting more of the same but something new.

 I can't stress enough the MILLIONS that were waiting in anticipation.  Warhammer highly publicized, Vanguard not so much, but people found a way to know about its development anyway….. They were millions if not a Billion with slight exaggeration on the billion part.  

 

 

Third,

Something unexpected happened… A major tragic event took place…Both had failed ! 

-Vanguard for it's coding and associability along with bad politics. 

-Warhammer because undenounced change to third generation, it didn't play like a second generation game like the public was expecting.  RvR failed…. But more importantly the introduction of "Public events" caused the solo experience that later made the world seem cold and players found they didn't need others.  The beginning of third generation.   This game was riddled with bad design with small zones, Scenario PvP that took the player out of the world for player instanced content.  People didn't like being pulled from the world.  They wanted cohesive Multi player communities.  They were expecting more World of Warcraft, instead they were blind sided with THE FIRST OF ITS KIND THIRD GENERATION.

This game proved something.  Third Generation was not mmorpg like, but something all together new and different.  This in not really a bad thing, just not mmo.  

 

Last,

Second generation was no more.  Developers decided to market and push for something that fit their own agenda and tell the people that’s what they wanted, ignoring the failure of Warhammer.

  

This is how it went down.  

Now some of my thoughts,

Second Generation took the place of First generation and Third Gen took the place of Second. 

Why not have all three ?.... All three would be very popular…. Instead we only have one !.... Nostalgic older games are not the answer, their old and most are revamped to Third Generation anyway. 

delete5230

I would love to see others view on "how it went down " 

That would be some interesting reading

Albatroes

delete5230 said:

First,

World of Warcraft took the world by storm, it took the basic premises of earlier models and enhanced the experience 10x over.  Sure some fixated first generation players grumbled, but the masses loved it. 

Very powerful time for a popularity standpoint…..As time passed people wanted more of the same.  

 

Second,

Vanguard and Warhammer Online was in the making… People that loved World of Warcraft were expecting more of the same but something new.

 I can't stress enough the MILLIONS that were waiting in anticipation.  Warhammer highly publicized, Vanguard not so much, but people found a way to know about its development anyway….. They were millions if not a Billion with slight exaggeration on the billion part.  

 

 

Third,

Something unexpected happened… A major tragic event took place…Both had failed ! 

-Vanguard for it's coding and associability along with bad politics. 

-Warhammer because undenounced change to third generation, it didn't play like a second generation game like the public was expecting.  RvR failed…. But more importantly the introduction of "Public events" caused the solo experience that later made the world seem cold and players found they didn't need others.  The beginning of third generation.   This game was riddled with bad design with small zones, Scenario PvP that took the player out of the world for player instanced content.  People didn't like being pulled from the world.  They wanted cohesive Multi player communities.  They were expecting more World of Warcraft, instead they were blind sided with THE FIRST OF ITS KIND THIRD GENERATION.

This game proved something.  Third Generation was not mmorpg like, but something all together new and different.  This in not really a bad thing, just not mmo.  

 

Last,

Second generation was no more.  Developers decided to market and push for something that fit their own agenda and tell the people that’s what they wanted, ignoring the failure of Warhammer.

  

This is how it went down.  

Now some of my thoughts,

Second Generation took the place of First generation and Third Gen took the place of Second. 

Why not have all three ?.... All three would be very popular…. Instead we only have one !.... Nostalgic older games are not the answer, their old and most are revamped to Third Generation anyway. 

Unfortunately you're either leaving out a lot of information or are just simply misinformed as to why things turned out the way they did for games involved (and others that were arguably more popular than the latter 2 you mentioned).

To get to the root would be to say that control of the market was gone due to eastern over-saturation of it, which forced many companies to respond in kind (even the mighty Blizzard). Without control of the market, things can't be shaped. Decisions are only made as a response like we have now because the demographic is honestly too fickle. People have too many choices now and not enough time.

Keep something else important in mind that the mmorpg market was honestly never that big to begin with as an entertainment medium. Sure, wow had 12 million concurrent subs at one point, but you have nearly triple that watching sports/movies/shows etc on a regular basis. Couple that with people not have a lot of time and things diminish. Think about that for a moment and then add things like watching Twitch/Youtube/Netflix/etc, all these things fighting for the one thing that has never changed, time. This is why so many things are trying to offer so much in one platform, to better entice people that their time is better spent with them.

Tl;dr - People have too many options and too little time, this is what is currently shaping all development, not just mmos, but other media platforms as well.

delete5230

Albatroes said:

delete5230 said:

First,

World of Warcraft took the world by storm, it took the basic premises of earlier models and enhanced the experience 10x over.  Sure some fixated first generation players grumbled, but the masses loved it. 

Very powerful time for a popularity standpoint…..As time passed people wanted more of the same.  

 

Second,

Vanguard and Warhammer Online was in the making… People that loved World of Warcraft were expecting more of the same but something new.

 I can't stress enough the MILLIONS that were waiting in anticipation.  Warhammer highly publicized, Vanguard not so much, but people found a way to know about its development anyway….. They were millions if not a Billion with slight exaggeration on the billion part.  

 

 

Third,

Something unexpected happened… A major tragic event took place…Both had failed ! 

-Vanguard for it's coding and associability along with bad politics. 

-Warhammer because undenounced change to third generation, it didn't play like a second generation game like the public was expecting.  RvR failed…. But more importantly the introduction of "Public events" caused the solo experience that later made the world seem cold and players found they didn't need others.  The beginning of third generation.   This game was riddled with bad design with small zones, Scenario PvP that took the player out of the world for player instanced content.  People didn't like being pulled from the world.  They wanted cohesive Multi player communities.  They were expecting more World of Warcraft, instead they were blind sided with THE FIRST OF ITS KIND THIRD GENERATION.

This game proved something.  Third Generation was not mmorpg like, but something all together new and different.  This in not really a bad thing, just not mmo.  

 

Last,

Second generation was no more.  Developers decided to market and push for something that fit their own agenda and tell the people that’s what they wanted, ignoring the failure of Warhammer.

  

This is how it went down.  

Now some of my thoughts,

Second Generation took the place of First generation and Third Gen took the place of Second. 

Why not have all three ?.... All three would be very popular…. Instead we only have one !.... Nostalgic older games are not the answer, their old and most are revamped to Third Generation anyway. 

Unfortunately you're either leaving out a lot of information or are just simply misinformed as to why things turned out the way they did for games involved (and others that were arguably more popular than the latter 2 you mentioned).

To get to the root would be to say that control of the market was gone due to eastern over-saturation of it, which forced many companies to respond in kind (even the mighty Blizzard). Without control of the market, things can't be shaped. Decisions are only made as a response like we have now because the demographic is honestly too fickle. People have too many choices now and not enough time.

Keep something else important in mind that the mmorpg market was honestly never that big to begin with as an entertainment medium. Sure, wow had 12 million concurrent subs at one point, but you have nearly triple that watching sports/movies/shows etc on a regular basis. Couple that with people not have a lot of time and things diminish. Think about that for a moment and then add things like watching Twitch/Youtube/Netflix/etc, all these things fighting for the one thing that has never changed, time. This is why so many things are trying to offer so much in one platform, to better entice people that their time is better spent with them.

Tl;dr - People have too many options and too little time, this is what is currently shaping all development, not just mmos, but other media platforms as well.

A lot of good stuff here, I respect that,
I don't feel I left much out but more the basics.  I just feel Vanguard and Warhammer played an extremely large roll at a critical time in when people were expecting GREAT Sequels that kept the mojo running high. 

People loved this time in history they were expecting advancement, not dramatic overhauls to something new altogether being Third Generation.

Perhaps if Vanguard worked, the mojo could have continued, unfortunately it failed. Warhammer was the first cross over that's why I use that example.

Then you talk about Eastern games and other changes that came about.... All this is true, just that  the post was getting too long to go beyond.

Think of it as the first part or the beginning of the end of mmorpg. 

btdt

I've learned to stop even reading the OP's posts because well, he never says anything worth reading.  But if he has the right to spam nonsense, I have the right to reply nonsense in kind.

Scot

I don't really accept this second, third generation idea; there is two much muddled water for that. Instead I think of old school and new school, with hybrids in between. That's one of the reasons I think "second generation failed to continue" it is hard to pin down what was meant by second generation. Also over the last ten years in particular we have seen nearly all the older MMOs adopt new school gameplay/cash shop tactics to a varying degree.

Effectively we now have a genre which is one big mash up of gameplay, with anything new school being given the priority. That is why it is so difficult to feel that one modern MMO is distinct from any other.

Amaranthar

Scot said:

I don't really accept this second, third generation idea; there is two much muddled water for that. Instead I think of old school and new school, with hybrids in between. That's one of the reasons I think "second generation failed to continue" it is hard to pin down what was meant by second generation. Also over the last ten years in particular we have seen nearly all the older MMOs adopt new school gameplay/cash shop tactics to a varying degree.

Effectively we now have a genre which is one big mash up of gameplay, with anything new school being given the priority. That is why it is so difficult to feel that one modern MMO is distinct from any other.

Yep. 
To me, there are two basic game play concepts.
- There's Sandbox, where you find open world game play.
- Then there's Levelling games (Themeparks), where you move through the game world and content according to level. 
In either case, quests can be used to move a story along, and quests work great in the levelling games because there's a need to find the content suited to levels. 

And some games add some elements of the other into their design, but at their core they are one or the other.

It's all about how a game is designed for a player to play it. 

bentrim

MMORPGs beginning failure, was due to fixing something that was NOT broken. Implementing PVP...making every class solo capable, and then working on "Balancing" issues in the game, instead of content. These changes have "KILLED" the genre. WOW... EQ... EQ2, are "baseline" MMORPGs that are STILL atop  of the popularity charts in the genre. Everything else now is either a failure or clinging to popularity.

Wizardry

Wow never took my world by storm,i did not see a single thing i liked there,walked in release day and was bored almost instantly.
As to Warhammer,i took a long look at that game,expected perhaps something decent.However i watched all those dev pod casts and the more i saw of the team i knew no way was that game going to be any good.Then near release day more stuff was dumbed down or removed until it became a very mundane boring game that i lasted one day in and never wanted to go back.

To me i see simple reason why i don't see enough good games,all the people that came about when DSL became a big thing have way different standards for quality gaming than i do,mine  are high,theirs are very low.Basically the standards i see right now are...i have internet,give me games,gimmee gimmeee,here is my money.

Baxslash

Most Modern MMOs are so dumbed down, they are more of the offering sugar water then those released back in 00-06, Eve Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Earth and Beyond, WOW, and, even the big 3 in 00, come to mind, they had distinction, they had made it out of the race gate first in a manner, but, then games, like City Of Heroes/Villians came along, and wanted to be more like WOW, and, even SW:Galaxiies, tried to get into that WOW mentality, and, that became the greater failure to first Gen. MMOs, now, we get a mashup of MMO's, that are still, trying to be that next great WOW impersonation, except for all the lootbox, and monetetion crapshit, and, the MMO industry is claiming that they are king of the world, when most of the companies, are more interested in handing huge salaries to their upper echalon management teams, who, have no clue what they are actually doing with their companies, except draining the wallets of gamers, who want an honest and open game.

elocke

Warhammer was a themepark MMO that didn't have the amazing character controls that WoW brings to the table.  Case in point, when casting a spell as a Sorc it was wooden and took forever.  Even running around the world, every character type moved the same way and it felt lackluster in comparison to WoW.  There were a lot of good ideas in Warhammer but it didn't have polish or a good engine to run it.  Also, pvp scenarios didn't ruin WAR, if anything PVP is all that kept it alive as long as it did.  But saying they hurt the game and comparing the game to WoW which has the same things called Battlegrounds is just incorrect, seeing as how popular those battlegrounds were and still are.

Vanguard was slightly similar in regards to technical difficulties.  Again, a bad engine and rough character feedback and especially zone chunks where when running across the world the game would literally hitch and make mobs chasing you disappear.  Vanguard was more sandboxy, with themepark elements, something I still prefer to this day it, just didn't have the budget or marketing  to compete with the big guy.  

This is why I think sandbox is going to come back or at least hybrids of it and will hopefully have nice, fluid engines running them with precise UI and character feedback coupled with nice graphics and sound.  I'm looking at Pantheon as an example of potential games coming that reflect this.  Also possibly Ashes of Creation and Camelot unchained and Chronicles of Elyria, but we won't know till they come out, but I ever the optimist will gladly wait for the, because what else am I going to do. 

Baxslash

I agree with you elocke, most generalized mmo's today stay close to a mashed up varation of the themepark idealogy, which is actually hurting todays mmo, in a big way, a great example is Star Trek Online, when Cryptic bought out the company origionally making STO in beta, they promised that they where going to continue the idealogy of that companies vision of STO, and, they did, through BETA, then, right after release, they started the old tried true method of cut and paste, and literally started pushing out the original Devs and GMs, who made the original game, but, weren't onboard, for the cut and paste content that Cryptic wanted to do on STO, and, if you look at STO after 9 years, you got a new generation of Devs and GMs, who are more interested in doing very little work on the content of STO, and, are more inspired to play the board game of Star Trek, then their jobs, BUT, after 9 years of that kind of rubbish mentality toward making games, who comes along, and makes one of the most grand themepark varations of games today, Rockstar, with GTAV, and, their take on the MMO community they've built with GTAOnline, which has been a great boon for Rockstar. If Companies actually took notice 4 years ago, at what Rockstar was about to accomplish, and maybe tried that type of experimentation, we would have many more types of real mmos to choose from, that will have appealed to gamers, instead of tying all of their mentality up and trying to copy WOW somewhat success.

Kyleran

Baalzharon said:

WoW is #1 MMO and #2 MMO. Classic WoW is #1 and WoW BFA is #2. #1 and #2 isnt your favorite MMO, its the most subscribed or played MMO and with that wow is both #1 and #2 because this is an MMO that you never saw before in your life and who could say what could be made it what is what about when the #1 and #2 won the MMO but what is #3 and #4? Where did #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 go? WoW is #1 and #2

Links to the source of your rankings?

Blizzard start publishing sub numbers again, a new Sooperdata report? Anything besides randomly making stuff up?

Kyleran

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

bentrim said:

MMORPGs beginning failure, was due to fixing something that was NOT broken.

MMOs did fail ? I wasn't aware...

There are many times more MMO players nowadays in the world than there was in 2004 (Wow release), or even more than in 2000 when the "3 big ones" (EQ/UO/AC1) shared the market.
Failure? Not sure you know what that means.

People often say this, but rarely can they prove such statements. Also, the answer depends greatly on how one defines what MMORPG is, which is a subset of a much broader MMO category, or which games really are Massively Multiplayer at all.

Can't really any decent comparisons with the lack of any solid information these days.

centkin

People actually LOVED the scenarios in Warhammer and the ability to advance without PVE.  If they didn't have scenarios then WAR would have flopped horribly because the number of people who were into world pvp is far more limited than those who like "I can pvp with an objective for 20 minutes." 

The public quests were also quite nice -- and unique at the time -- nobody else had done it before.  You could group without grouping. 

Where Warhammer failed and failed miserably was world balance.  You had far too many chaos and not enough order.  If you have 1.5 to 1, it completely breaks the game and 2 to 1 just makes things utterly miserable. 

The other place Warhammer failed was the huge battles prior to invading the city.  The game simply couldnt handle that many people.  They likely knew this at release (because progressing the map really wasn't possible for quite a long time) and were scrambling to make it be able to work with that many people, but the 300v300 battles just crashed the game, and slideshowed everything before it crashed.  The city battles themselves were kind of tagged on like an after thought.

Really what should have happened was if you took over altdorf, the game should have essentially ended.  You would then fight against another server that won, and the loser would go against another server that lost.

I remember the day after a server merger, altdorf was sacked FOUR TIMES in a single day.  The ratio was like 2.1 to 1 and order didn't have a chance.  It also wasn't at all fun.  In essence once the balance became really bad, it got even worse because the weaker side would be pounded into the ground and stop showing up.

Warhammer was a good game that a lot of people liked -- but the endgame, both in PvP and PvE with its many timers and RNG issues (if you continually failed to get items, you essentially became worthless to your guild in progression -- and it was all luck and you could only try every 5 days -- if you failed to get a couple of items the first 7 times you essentially had to drop back to the B squad then the C squad). 

IF they had some method of balancing the sides such that things were relatively fair, and they had fixed the ability to do 300v300+ battles or handled that aspect differently, the game would have been a complete success.

elocke

I did too, but I think they were more worried about taking on WoW then just making their own game.  Granted, I still think the engine was crap and makes or breaks ANY game any more, SWTOR is a good example, but most people don't talk about the framework of games which boggles my mind.  If they had made the game far more immersive and polished  and it's own game, not a semi clone of WoW, I think it would still be around.  

You either copy WoW and do it well, i.e. FFXIV or u do your own thing like GW2(of course this game is just suffering from no trinity, hahaha)

OGDeathRow

DMKano said:

I though Warhammer was a complete disaster - the only thing that was above mediocre was PvP scenarios.

PvE was really underwhelming.

The game had this "half-baked" feel throughout.

I mean look what happened to the game - it tanked hard, so it's not surprising. 

(BTW - anyone remember Mark Jacobs pre-Warhamer launch quotes "look at us a month, 3 months out - if we are not adding servers, we are not doing well")

They were not doing well....never added those servers as players left in droves.

I was never more disappointed by any other MMO ever than I was with Warhammer - I thoght Mythic could outdo DAoC - and boy they didn't even come close.

That's actually a really good question - has any mmo outdone it's predecessor yet?

DAoC was far better than Warhammer
EQ1 - far better than EQ2, and Vanguard (as a "spiritual successor")
GW1 was better than GW2
Diablo 2 better than Diablo 3
Planetside 1 way better than Planteside 2
Asheron's call 1 - far better than 2

...

hmmm

I guess things are not looking so hot for Pantheon 

I felt the same way when they closed there doors, i enjoyed the majority of the game, even the pve wasnt that bad BUT with lack of good dungeons and raids, it was doomed. They were hell bent on being a pvp focused game, but keep seiges were just constantly trading back and forth without fights cause of people just wanting the loot and not the actually war.

Warhammer has my favorite classes. Really wish it made it.  The mmo world I want. 

elocke

DMKano said:

I though Warhammer was a complete disaster - the only thing that was above mediocre was PvP scenarios.

PvE was really underwhelming.

The game had this "half-baked" feel throughout.

I mean look what happened to the game - it tanked hard, so it's not surprising. 

(BTW - anyone remember Mark Jacobs pre-Warhamer launch quotes "look at us a month, 3 months out - if we are not adding servers, we are not doing well")

They were not doing well....never added those servers as players left in droves.

I was never more disappointed by any other MMO ever than I was with Warhammer - I thoght Mythic could outdo DAoC - and boy they didn't even come close.

That's actually a really good question - has any mmo outdone it's predecessor yet?

DAoC was far better than Warhammer
EQ1 - far better than EQ2, and Vanguard (as a "spiritual successor")
GW1 was better than GW2
Diablo 2 better than Diablo 3
Planetside 1 way better than Planteside 2
Asheron's call 1 - far better than 2

...

hmmm

I guess things are not looking so hot for Pantheon 

Don't see how u say that about Pantheon.  It might be a spiritual successor to EQ/Vanguard, but FFXI was the same thing and was/is amazing.  Heck, VG was better and EQ for me in every way except the bugs.  Pantheon is going to release in 2020 and beyond which is 20 years after it's predecessor.  I'd say it's got a good chance at doing it right this time.

Also, you said GW1 is better than GW2 but I disagree on that point.  I couldn't stand GW1 and wanted more of an MMO, which I finally got in GW2.  It would have been better if it had kept the trinity from MMOs but, well it didn't so it's what it is, but I love it far more than anything GW1 ever did.

Scorchien

elocke said:

DMKano said:

I though Warhammer was a complete disaster - the only thing that was above mediocre was PvP scenarios.

PvE was really underwhelming.

The game had this "half-baked" feel throughout.

I mean look what happened to the game - it tanked hard, so it's not surprising. 

(BTW - anyone remember Mark Jacobs pre-Warhamer launch quotes "look at us a month, 3 months out - if we are not adding servers, we are not doing well")

They were not doing well....never added those servers as players left in droves.

I was never more disappointed by any other MMO ever than I was with Warhammer - I thoght Mythic could outdo DAoC - and boy they didn't even come close.

That's actually a really good question - has any mmo outdone it's predecessor yet?

DAoC was far better than Warhammer
EQ1 - far better than EQ2, and Vanguard (as a "spiritual successor")
GW1 was better than GW2
Diablo 2 better than Diablo 3
Planetside 1 way better than Planteside 2
Asheron's call 1 - far better than 2

...

hmmm

I guess things are not looking so hot for Pantheon 

Don't see how u say that about Pantheon.  It might be a spiritual successor to EQ/Vanguard, but FFXI was the same thing and was/is amazing.  Heck, VG was better and EQ for me in every way except the bugs.  Pantheon is going to release in 2020 and beyond which is 20 years after it's predecessor.  I'd say it's got a good chance at doing it right this time.

Also, you said GW1 is better than GW2 but I disagree on that point.  I couldn't stand GW1 and wanted more of an MMO, which I finally got in GW2.  It would have been better if it had kept the trinity from MMOs but, well it didn't so it's what it is, but I love it far more than anything GW1 ever did.

Im gonna pipe in here on Warhammer , I played Warhammer to RR 93 was in full Soverign gear , never did a Sceanrio(inlive) till i was RR 89 and game was near its end .. My statue Gatlin stood in Altdorf for 9 months straight at one time , I was heavily into it and it was fantastic RvR for  while then the Scenarios crept in , this was the downfall of War , You do not create an RvR game centered on Lakes then give the players a reason to leave the Lakes ..

 ( a shout out to Vindictus / Bugmans and all of our great alliance that made the game fun for many )

     Players were just farming Scenarios and not in the RvR which was the purpose and main focus of the game ,

  I stated this when i was testing Scenrios for War and told the Devs not to include Gear set pieces in SCs, Make the drop rate in Lakes a bit higher and include all pieces at different %  drop rate(not just Boots and Gloves) and you would get players in the Lakes where the games intent was ..

       Also they should have made all pieces tradable and it would have infused the MArket which was desperatley needed ..

  I still play War on RoR server which IMO is a btter version of the game than the one EA shuttered ..

           I will however agree with Kano on GW1/D2 and AC

  I like PS2 better than 1

 Wars RvR better than DAoC altho DAoC a better overall experience

i enjoy Eq1 and 2 equally